Supplemental: Just how large is the gender wage gap?

SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 2015

The analysts looked at some numbers: Just how large is the gender wage gap?

Presumably, that’s an important question. It’s also a question where we the liberals may perhaps tend to play around with the basic statistics, engaging in conduct we used to condemn when done by The Other Tribe.

How large is the gender wage gap? We became intrigued by this question when Rachel Maddow seemed to con us liberals but good in April 2012.

Over a two-day period, Maddow went for the hat trick. Appearing on Meet the Press, she stated a familiar claim—women are paid 77 cents on the dollar, as compared to men, for “the same or equal work.”

That was step one in the hat trick. Steps two and three occurred the next night.

On Meet the Press, Maddow was challenged about the accuracy of this familiar claim. The next night, she said she had spent “a long time going through the Republican side of this argument today just trying to understand” the objection, but she had failed to do so.

That claim was quite hard to believe. We had googled the claim that same day. When we did, we found the objection explained, quite clearly and rather convincingly, in roughly two or three minutes.

Step three involved the slippery work of a tribal expert. On Maddow’s Monday night program, this expert said that Maddow’s claim had been wrong. But she said it in such a slippery, jargonized way that liberal viewers surely thought that she’d said exactly the opposite.

We liberals! We used to say that we were appalled when Hannity played these slippery games—about the amount of taxes paid by the rich, to cite one prime example. Increasingly, we liberals now seem inclined to play these games ourselves.

Did something of that sort occur in Thursday’s New York Times? We couldn’t help wondering as we read an op-ed column bearing this headline:

That said, how big is the gender pay gap? The column’s author, Joanne Lipman, never used the familiar statistic in which women are said to be underpaid by 28 percent. Indeed, she never attempted to define the general size of the gender wage gap—at least not for this country.

Instead, Lipman started by offering these narrower formulations. Our analysts came to us with observations and complaints:

LIPMAN (8/13/15): More than a half-century after President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the gap between what men and women earn has defied every effort to close it. And it can’t be explained away as a statistical glitch, a function of women preferring lower-paying industries or choosing to take time off for kids.

Claudia Goldin, a labor economist at Harvard, has crunched the numbers and found that the gap persists for identical jobs, even after controlling for hours, education, race and age. Female doctors and surgeons, for example, earn 71 percent of what their male colleagues make, while female financial specialists are paid just 66 percent as much as comparable men. Other researchers have calculated that women one year out of college earn 6.6 percent less than men after controlling for occupation and hours, and that female M.B.A. graduates earn on average $4,600 less than their male classmates for their first jobs.

Is anything “wrong” with those statistics? Not necessarily, no. But here’s what the analysts told us:

They started with the statistics from Goldin. At the link which Lipman offered, Goldin computes the size of the gender wage gap for 25 different professions, some of which have no gender wage gap at all.

Given those 25 different choices, Lipman specifically cited “financial specialists”—the profession where Goldin records the largest gender wage gap. She also cited “doctors and surgeons,” where Goldin records the third largest gap.

A person could regard this as cherry-picking, our analysts gravely said. Beyond that, they noted that all “physicians and surgeons” aren’t necessarily created equal.

Surgeons tend to earn more than family practitioners, the analysts said—and they said they’ve read that women are more likely than men to choose the latter specialty. Do Goldin’s data adjust for such choices? Frankly, we had no idea.

The analysts made other observations about Lipman’s statistical formulations. Is it true that “women one year out of college earn 6.6 percent less than men after controlling for occupation and hours?”

Let’s assume it is, they said—and let’s ignore the possible role of different niches within occupations. That 6.6 percent wage gap is nowhere near the 22-28 percent gap we liberals commonly cite, they felt compelled to observe.

Meanwhile, how about that $4600 salary shortfall for MBA graduates? Assuming all factors are equal, they angrily said, there shouldn’t be any shortfall at all.

But on an (imagined) average male salary of $50,000, that would be a 9.2 percent shortfall, they incontrovertibly noted. Again, they noted that this shortfall doesn’t come close to the 22-28 percent claim we liberals often advance.

(If new MBAs are paid more than that, the shortfall would be even less. Or so the analysts said.)

As noted, Lipman made no claim about the overall size of the gender wage gap in the United States. At one point, she did offer a claim about the overall size of the gap in Great Britain—and the analysts screamed about that:

LIPMAN: There is an antidote to the problem. Britain recently introduced a plan requiring companies with 250 employees or more to publicly report their own gender pay gap. It joins a handful of other countries, including Austria and Belgium, that have introduced similar rules...

Last year, the consulting firm Pricewaterhouse- Coopers voluntarily released its gender pay gap in Britain, one of five firms in the country, including AstraZeneca, to do so. Simply saying the number out loud “created much more momentum internally” to close it, Sarah Churchman, who runs the firm’s British diversity and inclusion efforts, told me.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’s analysis showed that most of its 15.1 percent pay disparity (compared with a Britain-wide gap of more than 19 percent) reflected a lack of women in senior jobs. So the firm focused on whether it was promoting fairly. In 2013, the grade just below partner was 30 percent female, yet only 16 percent of those promoted to partner were women. A year later, the percentage of women promoted to partner had more than doubled.

Are women unfairly denied promotions? That’s an important question. But in the course of that passage, Lipman claims that Great Britain has a “Britain-wide [gender pay] gap of more than 19 percent.”

The average full-time pay gap between men and women is at its narrowest since comparative records began in 1997, official figures show.

The difference stood at 9.4% in April compared with 10% a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, a gap of about £100 a week.

As you may know, “£” is the British dollar sign. It’s just the way they write it!

At any rate, Britain’s gender pay gap stands at 9.4 percent, according to Lipman’s link. (From the BBC report, it isn’t clear what kinds of statistical adjustments have produced that figure.)

Britain’s gender pay gap stands at 9.4 percent, according to Lipman’s own link. So where did her substantially larger “more than 19 percent” figure come from?

Alas! Deep in the BBC report, that’s the figure for the gap in incomes of all British workers, full-time and part-time workers alike. We’re going to guess that the larger gap reflects a larger percentage of women in part-time jobs.

In other words, to get that troubling larger figure, you pretty much have to throw away the basic adjustment for hours worked—an adjustment Lipman trumpeted all through the rest of her column. In the process, she threw away the 9.4 percent and brought home larger game.

How large is the gender wage gap? In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be any such gap at all, the analysts angrily said.

Of course, in that same perfect world, they added, you wouldn’t have people like Hannity using misleading figures to distort the amount of taxes paid by the very rich. You also wouldn’t have people like us learning to play the same games!

Skillfully, we offered one additional point. You’d have big newspapers like the Times requiring more from contributors.

Presumably, the size of the gender pay gap actually matters. Why play around with the basic facts, as our own glorious tribe increasingly seems inclined to do in an array of such partisan matters?

We used to complain when Sean played slippery games. Increasingly, we almost think we see our tribe doing it too.

A final piteous note: “Do you think Rachel has figured these data out by now?”

102 comments:

"Hillary Clinton portrays herself as a champion of women in the workforce, but women working for her in the U.S. Senate were paid 72 cents for each dollar paid to men, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of her Senate years’ salary data."

"Clinton herself has raised the issue, saying last year that there is still “more work to do,” and that 20 years ago women made just “72 cents on the dollar to men”–a figure identical to the gender pay gap in her own Senate office."

"In February, the conservative online Washington Free Beacon published its analysis of salaries among Clinton’s Senate staffers from 2002-08. The results, the website said, showed female staffers were paid 72 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Some pundits since have trumpeted the revelation as a black eye for Clinton, one that shows she oversaw a gender pay-gap even worse than the popular, but often flawed, national 77-cent statistic.

Sean Hannity previewed a panel discussion about the story on the May 14 episode of Hannity on Fox News, saying, "As senator, she actually paid female staffers a lot less than the men."

"The Hillary Clinton campaign has confirmed the accuracy of a Washington Free Beacon analysis that showed that women working in Clinton’s Senate office were paid just 72 cents for each dollar paid to men.

The campaign told FactCheck.org it does not dispute the accuracy of the report, which analyzed the office’s publicly available disbursement forms from fiscal years 2002 to 2008 and found that men working for Clinton had a median salary $15,708.38 higher than women"

"Obama cast the statistic in a more accurate light in his 2014 State of the Union address: "You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment.

This time his claim rated Mostly True, as the Census Bureau figure is credible when presented as an average."

I wasn't interested in debating Obama since you didn't bring him up in your comment.

But since the Free Beacon lied once, there is no reason why they shouldn't lie twice about Clinton. Here is what the Clinton campaign actually told FactCheck.org.

"Pushing back against that analysis, the Clinton campaign provided FactCheck.org a list of the names, titles and annual salaries of every full-time person employed in Clinton’s Senate office between 2002 and 2008. Those data show the median salary for men and women to be the same at $40,000. The data also show Clinton hired roughly twice as many women as men."

When it comes to cicero everyone should be mindful that the same sources which told New York Times reporters a criminal referral had been made against Hillary Clinton told me that while cicero's brain lacks the depth and volume of his penis, it is equal to its length is one has the right measurement tools. The Clinton campaign could not be reached for comment.

"There are many different ways to measure these things and you will get slightly different answers," said Eileen Patten, a research analyst at the Pew Research Center. "It's not that either data set is flawed. They just show different things." -

Not to mention the FBI is investigating HRC's TOP SECRET emails kept on her server. They only do criminal investigations. The NYT front page story is more truthful than POTUS Obama.

I'm not here for your entertainmentYou don't really wanna mess with me tonightJust stop and take a secondI was fine before you walked into my lifeCause you know it's over, before it beganKeep your drink, just give me the moneyIt's just you and your hand tonight

Hello, i just want to share my experience and testimony here.. i was married for 4 years to my husband and all of a sudden another woman came into the picture, he started hailing me and he was abusive but i still loved him with all my heart and wanted him at all cost… then he filed for divorce, my whole life was turning apart and i didn't know what to do; he moved out of the house and abandoned the kids.. So a friend of mine told me about trying spiritual means to get my husband back and introduced me to a spell caster… i decided to try it reluctantly although i didn't believe in all those things… then when this great man Dr Eboehi did the special prayers and spell, after 2days, my husband came back and was pleading he had realized his mistakes.. i just couldn't believe it.. anyways we are back together now and we are happy.. In-case anyone of you is passing through any relationship problem i would advise you to email this Great Man via: eboehispellcaster@yahoo.com or call (208) 627-4749 and live a better life. thanks Sylvia Martin from Texas

Instead of arguing about the exact size of the gap, why not examine why any gap exists and how to eliminate it?

Among physicians, women are found in niches because of hazing by men. It causes them to avoid surgery, for example, where hazing us extreme, as has been repeatedly documented. It isn't that women just love and gravitate toward all those lower paying specialties. They decide the unrelenting hazing isn't worth it. This happens in other occupations too.

Who gives a damn what the actual number is? People who want to argue about stats instead of addressing the issue strike me as defending the status quo (at best), more likely sexist.

Somerby needs to get off this crusade. Women are not only underpaid, their choices are limited by men who don't want competition.

Women have limited choices? The only occupations women are not currently employed in are those they do not apply for. How do imagine employers get around the EEOC regulations? Women are not into scut work employment.

100% of heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics are men.98% of metal fabricators are men.97% of aircraft maintenance and service technicians are men.95.5% of firefighters are men99% of coal miners are men99% of garbage collectors are men.100% of deep sea fishermen are men.100% of electrical power line installers are men.100% of roughnecks (work the oil drill) are men.99% of auto repair mechanics are men.*98% of metal fabricators are men..88% of patrol officers are men

And also, I'd love to know how we're to determine the causes of a gap, if we don't understand its size. Obviously, the relevant consideration is the size of the gap attributable to sexism. Truth be told, the <5% it is just isn't that sexy a figure to sell.

Bob's fluffer comes back from a long absence for a late weigh in with what the truth is. What a buffoon.

Here is the truth, Matt the Fluffer. Women working full time in the US make 78% of what men working full time make in gross salary. It is a figure which should have you concerned. Instead you argue on behalf of Bob that a lower figure is not sexy while at the same time demonstrating you have no clue what sexism is.

Gender discrimination violates federal law. It's the President's job to see that federal law is enforced. So, people who claim that there's a big gender pay gap ought to blame Barack Obama. Why does this never happen?

The Ledbetter law has nothing to do with whether discrimination is illegal or whether women deserve to be paid the same as men for equal work. These laws are about the legal process, the terms under which lawsuits can proceed, how employers can defend themselves against claims, and the statutes of limitations for launching a complaint. And setting clear, fair rules is important for job creation and getting our economy back on track. This isn’t a black-and-white issue; it’s a balancing act. Employees need to have time to file complaints, but employers also need to know that they don’t face a potential liability from employees let go 20 years ago and whose supervisors are no longer even with the company. We need a system that offers just compensation for those truly wronged by an employer, but not one that creates the potential for super-sized payouts that encourage frivolous lawsuits. Lawsuits impose a big cost on companies and on the economy. Businesses spending money preparing for and conducting litigation don’t have as much to invest in productive enterprises, such as research and development, expanding production, and hiring workers. This doesn’t mean that companies should be shielded from all lawsuits, but we need to discourage frivolous claims while protecting the rights of those who have legitimate grievances.

DinC, kind of nitwitty to asert Obama is responsible for the alleged gap. Under current law, it is illegal to discriminate in pay based on gender. Anyone who thinks she has been discriminated against can file a law suit or complaint with the EEOC. Even you can do better than that ridiculous claim.

When there is a statistical bias, it is not due to chance. I think you left the word gender out of your sentence about the absence of discrimination. By itself, discrimination just means choice. There's no reason to explain ethnic disparities using gender but they do represent choices.

Discrimination is not wrong. Discrimination on the basis of irrelevant applicant characteristics such as race, gender, or national origin, is wrong. Existence of demonstrable other biases does not make gender bias go away.

Technically speaking, I doubt there are sufficient Latvians in different occupations to make a valid statistical test of disproportionate representation.

According to the 1990 census, there were 75,747 persons of Latvian ancestry in the US. That's far more than adequate for statistical significance. In other words, it's not just a coincidence that Latvian Americans earn more than non-Latvian Americans. But, unfair discrimination seems very unlikely to be the cause of the difference. More likely, it relates to the culture of Latvian-Americans

Comparing men and women on the basis of equal work and equal hours probably underestimates the pay gap, because high-paying jobs are denied to women. For example, what if women are not choosing to go into family medicine rather than surgery, but are denied access to surgury programs? There are many gender ceilings in all kinds of professions, so women can't ascend to the highest-paying jobs.The overall compensation ratio, which appears to be 0.77, may actually be a better overall measure of the inequality than the job-by-job comparison. Bob doesn't know that it isn't (although maybe Maddow doesn't know one way or the other either).

What do you think about this work done by an economist from Cornell? She and her colleagues found that after adjusting or other factors, the average difference for in income earned between men and women in similar jobs is 9%. I ask because you seem to be knowledgeable and I have seen you comment at Dean Baker's, Max Sawicky, and the EconoSpeak blog.

That study wisely says, "On the one hand, that [the 9% difference] could be due to discrimination. On the other hand it could be due to some factors that employers know about that reflect productivity but are not possible for us to include in our analysis. So there might be gender differences -- I'm not saying there are -- but there might be gender differences in motivation or work commitment or negotiating skill, or a variety of unmeasured factors that we can't take into account in our analysis."

"Over a two-day period, Maddow went for the hat trick. Appearing on Meet the Press, she stated a familiar claim—women are paid 77 cents on the dollar, as compared to men, for “the same or equal work.”

Bob Somerby....Lying for the First Time

Maddow never said 77 cents on the dollar and for "the same and equal work" in even a single conversation much less in the same sentence on Meet the Press.

Somerby has repeated this lie over and over. When he first began to lie about it, on May 1, 2012, he did not connect the two statements. He in fact admitted Maddow's statement was technically accurate. Over time his lies have grown while the accuracy of what Maddow had to say has stayed the same. He is exactly like those who waged the War on Gore in this regard...a shameless fabricator.

RACHEL MADDOW: Policy. It should be about policy. And all of our best debates are always about policy. And it should be about policy that affects women specifically. The Romney campaign wants to talk about women and the economy. The- Women in this country still make 77 cents on the dollar for what men make. So if–

ALEX CASTELLANOS: Not exactly.

RACHEL MADDOW: Women don't make less than men?

ALEX CASTELLANOS: Actually, if you start looking at the numbers, Rachel, there are lots of reasons for that.

RACHEL MADDOW: Wait, wait, wait. No. Wait.

ALEX CASTELLANOS: Well, first of all, we–

RACHEL MADDOW: Don't tell me what the reasons are. Do women make less than men for doing the same work?

ALEX CASTELLANOS: Actually...

[REP.] CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS [(R-WA):] Not for the same work.

ALEX CASTELLANOS: ... no, because.

RACHEL MADDOW: [directing her exclamatory remark to Rodgers]Wow!

ALEX CASTELLANOS: Well...

RACHEL MADDOW: (LAUGH) Okay. We're working from different facts.

CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS: Okay. Fact challenge.

ALEX CASTELLANOS: ...for example, men work an average of 44 hours a week. Women work 41 hours a week. Men go into professions like engineering, science and math that earn more. Women want more flexibility–

RACHEL MADDOW: Listen, this is not a math is hard type of conversation.

ALEX CASTELLANOS: No, no. Yes, it is, actually.

RACHEL MADDOW: No, it isn't.

ALEX CASTELLANOS: We're having to look–

RACHEL MADDOW: No, listen–

DAVID GREGORY: All right, let Rachel–

RACHEL MADDOW: Right now women are making 77 cents...

ALEX CASTELLANOS: And litigated–

RACHEL MADDOW: ...on the dollar for what men are making, so...

ALEX CASTELLANOS: Well, that's not true.

RACHEL MADDOW: ...so...

ALEX CASTELLANOS: If so every–

DAVID GREGORY: All right, let Rachel make her point.

ALEX CASTELLANOS: ...greedy businessman in America would hire only women, save 25% and be hugely profitable.

RACHEL MADDOW: I feel like this is actually...

ALEX CASTELLANOS: That's it.

RACHEL MADDOW: ...and it's weird that you're interrupting me and not letting me make my point, because we get along so well. So let me make my point.

ALEX CASTELLANOS: I will.

RACHEL MADDOW: But it is important, I think, the interruption is important, I think, because now we know, at least from both of your perspectives that women are not faring worse than men in the economy. That women aren't getting paid less for equal work. I think that's a serious difference in factual understanding of the world....

Regarding Statement 1: "Women make 77 cents on the dollar for what men make." She said it. And it was true. Alex Castellano denied it was.

Regarding Statement 2: Women are paid less than men for the same work. Maddow stated it in a question. Castellano's answer was no. She stated it in the negative as her understanding of his answer to her question. Even if you could find her stating it as a direct, declarative sentence, it is still true.

You want to argue that either are false? Argue with Bob Somerby.

Statement 1:

From the Howler, May 2, Bob quotes from the transcript:

"MADDOW (4/29/12): 'The Romney campaign wants to talk about women and the economy. The— Women in this country still make 77 cents on the dollar for what men make.'

Stated that way, Maddow’s claim seems to be technically accurate—or at least it was as of 2010, according to the Census Bureau. As of 2010, women in this country earned 77 percent as much as men, if we simply look at total pay brought home."

I am not going to go through the litany of studies here that demonstrate that there is a gap in pay even when you control for all the factors you want to control for with women coming up earning less for the same work. Even Somerby concedes it.

The lie is what Somery wrote here, today:

"Appearing on Meet the Press, she stated a familiar claim—women are paid 77 cents on the dollar, as compared to men, for “the same or equal work.”

She didn't say that. She said both things separately. And separately they are both true. And the second statement was made as a question to others, to get them on record denying there was a gap at all, not to argue the size of the gap. The one who connected them is Bob. And, of course, the Republicans. But we will deal with that in Part 2.

Of for FUCK SAKE YOU ARE STUPID. She did state it. And you can state it several different ways. The exact, most precise way of stating it is:

On average, women working full time reported (in 2012 numbers) earning 77% of what men reported earning in salaries and wages.

And that is certainly true. Even Alex Catellanos, whose prior claim to fame was writing the anti-affirmative action ad for Jesse Helms, was hedging his bets enough to say "Not exactly."

You, on the other hand want to go all out in CAPS to SEXUALLY VERBALIZE and draw attention to the fact that you are so stupid you will challenge the vailidity of a simple statistic.

Maddow was not TRYING TO Imply that women are paid much less than men. They are. In the latest data it is now 78%.

Throughout Bob's writing on this topic one recurring theme he uses is that stating the 77% statistic might cause, or is even deliberately intended to cause less than discerning viewers and readers to read more into that statistic than is there. He never mentions that some people are so boneheaded that they are willing to deny the simple fact.

skeptonomist habilis -- my guess is that comparing men and women on the basis of equal work and equal hours probably overestimates the effect of unfair discrimination. Here are my reasons:

1. Employers have no particular reason to discriminate unfairly. In general, it's in their interest to hire the best person.

2. Employers have a reason to bend over backwards to avoid discriminating against women, since that's illegal. They don't have the same motivation to avoid discriminating against men.

3. The differences in wage are probably measured based on medians, rather than means. If a woman reaches in a fairly high-paying job, whether or not she gets even higher-paying job would have no effect at all on women's median wage.

4. Within my experience, women on average are less ambitious in terms of seeking jobs that will maximize their income. Women, more than men, seem to value other, non-monitery considerations.

5. Entrepreneurship involves little or no discrimination, since there's no boss to hire or give a raise. Relatively few women are entrepreneurs. IMHO this demonstrates a significant cultural difference (on average) between men and women -- a difference that can't be fully measured by hours and education.

6. Women take more sick days than men. In my experience, men have been more willing to work overtime than women. If this is true on average, it would fit in with men being more money-oriented than women.

What is Maddow's salary, vs. O'Reilly's salary and Hannity's salary? I feel since they are all doing comparable jobs, at a shit level, they should all be paid the same. And they should be paid in macaroons.

I agre with your taste, Anon 8:08. However, for TV hosts, there is an objective measure of their value -- namely the number of viewers. On July 24, the total viewers, according to Nielsen, were: Hannity - 1833. O'Reilly - 3206. Maddow - 737. (I assume these figures are in thousands.)

Bob Somerby starts his effort to show a hat trick of lies by Rachel Maddow by perpetrating a lie himself as her first step. That makes his alleged second step by Maddow problematic.

"The next night, she said she had spent “a long time going through the Republican side of this argument today just trying to understand” the objection, but she had failed to do so.

That claim was quite hard to believe. We had googled the claim that same day."

What is it that Maddow found hard to understand? Is it that people disagree or argue against her assertion that women earn 77% of what men make for the same or equal work? That is what Bob alleges here, but sadly for him she never said it. Or is it what Maddow really said that Monday but Bob has disappeared for three years?

Here is Maddow, on her Monday April 30th program the day after her Meet the Press Appearance. Her comment follows a video produced by Bloomberg News based on their own study of U.S. Census statistics:

"In 264 out of 265 major occupations, men get paid more than women do. Republicans, it turns out, do not believe this.....

In Republican minds women don't get paid less than men in this country."

You see, on Meet the Press, Maddow never did connect the 77% pay gap statistic to equal or the same work. She just stated the statistic and was interrupted by a Republican political consultant Alex Castellano who said "Not exactly." Then she asked him:

MADDOW: Women don't make less than men?

CASTELLANOS: Actually, if you start looking at the numbers, Rachel, there are lots of reasons for that.

MADDOW: Wait, wait, no, don't tell me the reasons. Do women make less than men for doing the same work?

CASTELLANOS: Actually, no, because—

Does just stating the 77% statistic mean adding "equal work" even if unstated? And does asking the direct question "Do women make less than men for the same work" means reinserting the 77% even when it is not there? Apparently the Republicans on the show thought so. So apparently does Bob in this post.

Let's direct Maddow's question to Bob and his readers. Bob, do women make less than men for the same work? Here was one of his answers on May 2, 2012:

"In some cases, the answer is yes."

And what, Bob, about her claim that women make 77 cents on the dollar for what men make?

"Stated that way, Maddow’s claim seems to be technically accurate" Bob wrote on May 2, 2012. On May 4, 2012 he got more technical in asserting its truth: ""Fact: According to the Census Bureau, women earned 77 percent as much as men in 2010. (This includes all full-time workers, defined as people who work at least 35 hours per week.)"

So twice Bob attested to and even sourced the accuracy of Maddow's 77 cent on the dollar statement.

Maddow, after getting Castellano to say women are not paid less than men for the same work says "“Some of us believe that women are getting paid less than men for doing the same work.”

As Somerby knows, Maddow' comment that men get paid more than women for the same work was based on the Bloomberg study. They took the gross aggregate 77 cent Census statistic and evaluated it by several hundred different occupations or job categories. Within all but one field, men got paid more. Not $1 for every 77 cents earned by women in each category, but still, women earned less than men for "doing the same work." Which is what Maddow asked and to which Catellanos had replied "No because..."

So what was Bob Somerby's judgement?

"As it turns out, Castellanos was almost certainly right—more right in his comments than Maddow."

What was it Maddow really found hard to understand? That Republicans object to a simple Census Bureau statistic and that they deny men make more than women for the same work.

Bob Somerby. In just two or three minutes of googling, he found Republicans are right on gender pay equality.

Having "proven" in his own mind years ago -- with "geometric logic" -- that the gender wage gap ain't so bad after all, Boxcar Bob will keep singing the same hit tune as long as his new right wing audience will listen.

As a professional in the field of analyzing statistics, I want to point out how weak a method it is to claim something is a cause simply because "all other possible causes have been eliminated." There's a direct way to measure the impact of sex discrimination. There have been innumerable sex discrimination cases filed. One could look at the impact of those that found sex discrimination and extrapolate the overall impact on wage differences. That would be good social science.

But, the approach of supposedly eliminating all other possibilities is fatally flawed. It can't be done with any accuracy. E.g., women, on average, miss more work time due to pregnancy and child care. What's the dollar impact of a shorter career? Any estimate would be a wild assed guess. Other possible differences, such as motivation, greed, courage, physical strength, etc. can hardly be defined, let alone measured accurately.

As I pointed out in an earlier comment, just about any subgroup in this country will have different wages than the overall average -- some higher, some lower. And, for most of these groups, unfair discrimination is not the cause.

E.g., there's no discrimination in favor of Jews and Mormons. The reverse, if anything. Could any of us mathematically tease out the factors that make these two groups earn so much more than average? Of course not.

In short, the only proper way to measure the impact of unfair discrimination is based the study directly on cases of unfair discrimination.

If you take the same resume and put a woman's name instead of a man's at the top, the man is more likely to get an interview and the wages he is estimated to be worth are higher. Such studies show that discrimination against women is real.

Your red herring about Mormons is annoying. Your comment about Jews is bigoted. Stop saying that women deserve to be paid less because they have kids. It makes you sound like a Neanderthal.

I didn't mean to insult Mormons and Jews. My intended point was that if you adjust for conveniently-available statistics, such as education and hours worked, Jews and Mormons would still show as earning much more than average. If you then follow the procedure of assiging all unidentified wage differences to discrimination, you would conclude that there's massive discrimination against non-Mormons and non -Jews. This is obviously not the case. Thus, the process of assuming that any unidentified earnings differences to unfair discrimination can give invalid results.

Also, the process of adjusting for various factors isn't always done well. E.g., sometimes degree levels are counted the same, whether they're in physics or in some less challenging field.

Anon 4:21 – the point is that graduating with a degree in physics requires high intelligence, technical ability and dedication. For many jobs the average physics graduate will be more capable that, say, the average women’s studies graduate. It would be invalid to conclude that unfair discrimination was the sole cause of any earnings differences between these two sets of majors.

I agree. In fact, I think college training is not particularly valuable for most jobs. My point is what the attainment of a physics degree tells about the person. A student who demonstrates the ability to get a degree in physics shows that she is unusually intelligent and effective. These are traits that are likely to lead to success in most fields.

Hello, i just want to share my experience and testimony here.. i was married for 4 years to my husband and all of a sudden another woman came into the picture, he started hailing me and he was abusive but i still loved him with all my heart and wanted him at all cost… then he filed for divorce, my whole life was turning apart and i didn't know what to do; he moved out of the house and abandoned the kids.. So a friend of mine told me about trying spiritual means to get my husband back and introduced me to a spell caster… i decided to try it reluctantly although i didn't believe in all those things… then when this great man Dr Eboehi did the special prayers and spell, after 2days, my husband came back and was pleading he had realized his mistakes.. i just couldn't believe it.. anyways we are back together now and we are happy.. In-case anyone of you is passing through any relationship problem i would advise you to email this Great Man via: eboehispellcaster@yahoo.com or call (208) 627-4749 and live a better life. thanks Sylvia Martin from Texas

How large is Bob's truth gap on the gender wage gap issue? I became intrigued by this question when Bob, while proclaiming Rachel Maddow factually correct on the issue in April 2012, foolishly proclaimed a right wing Republican political consultant was "almost certainly right" when he denied the very facts Bob himself was proclaiming to be accurate.

Then this post appeared and Bob, no longer concedes Maddow was accurate. He calls her a liar by distorting what she and others said in 2012. Let's look at what he calls her third step in the hat trick of lies.

"Step three involved the slippery work of a tribal expert. On Maddow’s Monday night program, this expert said that Maddow’s claim had been wrong. But she said it in such a slippery, jargonized way that liberal viewers surely thought that she’d said exactly the opposite."

Slippery work of a tribal expert?

Maddow's guest expert was Dr. Heidi Hartmann. Hartman holds a BA, MA, and PhD in economics (Yale 1974). She taught economics then worked for two years as a senior research economist at the Office of Research of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and for eight years as a staff member of the National Academy of Science/National Research Council. Hartmann held an American Statistical Association fellowship at the Census Bureau up until 1987 when she founded the Institute for Women’s Policy and Research. She also is a Research Professor at George Washington University and editor of the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy. This is your "tribal" expert.

In his 2012 series, Bob cited the work of someone who Alex Castellanos used as a source in a piece he wrote in The Daily Caller. "Castellanos cited Kay Hymowitz, a leading conservative expert on these topics."

Here is slippery at work. "Leading conservative expert on these topics"

Hymowitz was a fellow at the conservative think tank The Manhattan Insitute. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English literature (Tufts). She taught English literature and composition. She has written four books...on parentingm incluidng:

"MADDOW:.... Is there any way that the idea of a gender-based disparity is something that depends on how you look at it? Is this something other than a blunt truth about the American economy?

HARTMANN: Well, I mean, you obviously have by far the better part of the argument. You’ve got the Census Bureau and I might mention, the Bureau of Labor Statistics agreeing with you. Oh, also, I could mention, the U.S. General Accountability Office.

I think what the issue is for the Republicans is that they believe that that’s not—no matter how big the wage gap is, almost none of it is due to discrimination....."

That is some slippery jargonized way to say someone is wrong. Let's simplify it. "Major federal studies agree with you Rachel, but Republican disagree that discrimination is the cause of that which you are right about."

Bob, of course forgets to mention that what Maddow did on Meet the Press was try and get the two Republicans to deny there was a wage gap in the first place, or that women were paid less than men for the same work.

In all three instances where Bob tries to show Rachel Maddow lied her way into a hat trick of falsehood, it is Somerby who engages in mischaracterization, misstatement, and mendacity.

All Bob Somerby is saying is that it is wrong to present misleading and conflated statistics. This is an ongoing problem with the way issues are discussed and debated in this country as Somerby has amply demonstrated on any number of issues. The media is either completely incompetent, or they're not really trying anyway, presenting facts in a clear and objective manner is not their goal.

It appears there are some here who disagree with TDH and demand the right to spread misleading and confusing propaganda, even in a just cause.

"Cite anyone Bob mentions here who has made the claim the wage gap is 22-28%?"

TDH never made the claim which you demand I prove.

Somerby is writing about an op-ed in the NY Times by Joanne Lipman which reference a Price-Waterhouse study which she claims stated as fact ***(compared with a Britain-wide gap of more than 19 percent) ***

TDH took the time to see what the op-ed writer was referring to and as usual found somebody playing fast and loose with the facts.

This isn't difficult and shouldn't be controversial. It is important to be precise and clear with your facts, and I think Bob is perfectly right to demonstrate how this is not done with respect to "wage gap" debate.

TDH made the claim twice mm. I quoted him saying liberal commonly claim the pay gap is 22-28%. I thought I highlighted it in both sentences in which he used it, but apparently the highlighter failed. I'll do it for you again.

"Again, they noted that this shortfall doesn’t come close to the 22-28 percent claim we liberals often advance.."

If you think Bob is right, cite one person who has used the 22-28% figure. Bob says twice it is commonly used. We are not asking you to prove anything. We are asking you to find something which is often advanced.

"Growing prosperity is important, but making sure that all share in it is also critical. For too long, men and women have seen vast disparity in their earnings. Although the gap has closed in the last decades, the typical woman still earns only 73 percent of what the typical man earns. It is time to close that gap."

If it was obvious he would have stated it since he has referenced it many, many, many times over the past three years, including other places in this post.

He refers to 28% once, and 22-28% twice. You can't cite 28% because as common as he says this figures is, it cannot be found. 22% can be found because it is derived from the same source, the U.S. Census Bureau.

But if he is indeed referencing the Census figure, since when did Bob Somerby become like the Climate Change deniers and birthers. Why turn a statistical fact into a "liberal claim?"

mm, thanks for your reply and honest explanation of your inability to find anything. I think what you think he is obviously referring to might seem to be my guess too. Again, thanks for suggesting it as a possibility.

"In February, the conservative online Washington Free Beacon published its analysis of salaries among Clinton’s Senate staffers from 2002-08. The results, the website said, showed female staffers were paid 72 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Some pundits since have trumpeted the revelation as a black eye for Clinton, one that shows she oversaw a gender pay-gap even worse than the popular, but often flawed, national 77-cent statistic.

Sean Hannity previewed a panel discussion about the story on the May 14 episode of Hannity on Fox News, saying, "As senator, she actually paid female staffers a lot less than the men."

"Britain’s gender pay gap stands at 9.4 percent, according to Lipman’s own link. So where did her substantially larger “more than 19 percent” figure come from?

Alas! Deep in the BBC report, that’s the figure for the gap in incomes of all British workers, full-time and part-time workers alike." .

In other words, to get that troubling larger figure, you pretty much have to throw away the basic adjustment for hours worked—an adjustment Lipman trumpeted all through the rest of her column. In the process, she threw away the 9.4 percent and brought home larger game."

Bob Somerby

Well Bob, to quote Alex Catellanos, "not exactly."

You see, if you go even deeper in the BBC report Somerby cited to prove Lipman wrong, you find another statistic:

"Interesting statistics from the survey

How much do people earn? The UK median wage is £22,044 for all workers, full-time and part-time. Men in full-time work earn on average £29,441 and women in full-time jobs earn £23,889."

Correct me if I am wrong Bob readers. If 29, 441 = X, then doesn't 23,889 = .81141 X? When you round that off doesn't that say British women working full time have an annual average income which is 81% that of men? Doesn't that make the pay gap 19%? For full time workers.

Men are really, really angry. During the last few years researching this age group, I’ve stumbled onto a powerful underground current of male bitterness that has nothing to do with outsourcing, the Mancession, or any of the other issues we usually associate with contemporary male discontent. No, this is bitterness from guys who find the young women they might have hoped to hang out with entitled, dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling—and did I mention gold-digging?

Right, women love being called sluts for making choices about sex that men disapprove of. They love it when men think they can buy sex for the price of dinner. Do men expect their male friends to put out whenever they pick up the check? I think you have a very strange idea about what sex and dating equality means.

These are not my ideas. They are the ideas of one person Bob Somerby has called "an expert" on pay equity issues, Kay Hymowitz.

"To his credit, Hayes didn’t repeat the familiar statistic about women allegedly being paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men. That said, we liberals hear that claim so often we can recite it ourselves.

To Hayes’ credit, one of his guests was Kay Hymowitz, a conservative-leaning expert on the gender pay gap. In her first remark, she offered a fleeting critique of that familiar claim..."

Bob Somerby, on the other hand, finds Kay Hymowitz so reliable he has called her an expert on the issue of gender pay twice. He even went so far as to compliment Chris Hayes for having her on his program, and you know how hard it is to pry a compliment out of Bob for anyone at MSNBC, much less the Puppy.

"That said, how big is the gender pay gap? The column’s author, Joanne Lipman, never used the familiar statistic in which women are said to be underpaid by 28 percent."

Since Lipman never used the familiar statistic in which women are said to be underpaid by 28 percent, I decided to find out who did. Like Bob Soemrby fact checking Rachel Maddow back in 2012. I googled the familiar statistic for two or three minutes.

On page 4 of the Google search for "Women are underpaid by 28%" we finally found a reference to a 28% gender wage gap. Alas, it was from Ottawa. I also found a case in which women won a 28% pay adjustment due to wage discrimination, but Gack! It was from Califgonia in 1986. On page 5 I found babysitters pay had increased28% since 2009.

I'm a slow reader, so my two to three minutes of reading were up on Page 5. If the claim is familiar, I could not find it.

When I googled "Gender Pay Gap 28%" The first hit I got a hit would make cicero jump for joy. An American Enterprise Institute article stating the gender pay gap on Hillary Clinton's Senate staff was 28%.

Bob must be reading a different paper by Goldin than the AER paper that is linked to in the NYT article. There is no reference in that article to a 6.6 percent gap for women just out of college. Her data say it's closer to10 percent initially and the gap gets larger very quickly after college. (See figure 1 in her paper) Her estimate seems closer to 17 percent for all women controlling for occupation and hours. (See table 1). The whole purpose of her paper is to try to understand why the initial smaller gap grows into a much larger one. So, Bob's use of an estimate for new graduates (wherever he got it) to compare to the median gap for all women, in this context, looks like avery misleading kind of cherry picking.

Hello, i just want to share my experience and testimony here.. i was married for 4 years to my husband and all of a sudden another woman came into the picture, he started hailing me and he was abusive but i still loved him with all my heart and wanted him at all cost… then he filed for divorce, my whole life was turning apart and i didn't know what to do; he moved out of the house and abandoned the kids.. So a friend of mine told me about trying spiritual means to get my husband back and introduced me to a spell caster… i decided to try it reluctantly although i didn't believe in all those things… then when this great man Dr Eboehi did the special prayers and spell, after 2days, my husband came back and was pleading he had realized his mistakes.. i just couldn't believe it.. anyways we are back together now and we are happy.. In-case anyone of you is passing through any relationship problem i would advise you to email this Great Man via: eboehispellcaster@yahoo.com or call (208) 627-4749 and live a better life. thanks Sylvia Martin from Texas

A final piteous note: “Do you think Bob Somerby has remembered he described Rachel Maddow's numbers as technically correct three years ago and that she did not connect the Census figure to a claim that it represented "the same work?"

My Name is Carol Williams ..I never believed in Love Spells or Magics until I met this special spell caster when i contact this man called Dr.jartospellcaster@gmail.com Execute some business..He is really powerful..My wife divorce me with no reason for almost 4 years and i tried all i could to have her back cos i really love her so much but all my effort did not work out.. we met at our early age at the college and we both have feelings for each other and we got married happily for 5 years with no kid and she woke up one morning and she told me she’s going on a divorce..i thought it was a joke and when she came back from work she tender to me a divorce letter and she packed all her loads from my house..i ran mad and i tried all i could to have her back but all did not work out..i was lonely for almost 4 years...So when i told the spell caster what happened he said he will help me and he asked for her full name and her picture..i gave him that..At first i was skeptical but i gave it a try cos have tried so many spell casters and there is no solution...so when he finished with the readings,he got back to me that she’s with a man and that man is the reason why she left me...The spell caster said he will help me with a spell that will surely bring her back.but i never believe all this...he told me i will see a positive result within 3 days..3 days later,she called me herself and came to me apologizing and she told me she will come back to me..I cant believe this,it was like a dream cos i never believe this will work out after trying many spell casters and there is no solution..The spell caster is so powerful and after that he helped me with a pregnancy spell and my wife got pregnant a month later..we are now happy been together again and with lovely kid..This spell caster has really changed my life and i will forever thankful to him..he has helped many friends too with similar problem too and they are happy and thankful to him..This man is indeed the most powerful spell caster have ever experienced in life..Am Posting this to the Forum in case there is anyone who has similar problem and still looking for a way out..you can reach him here:Dr.jartospellcaster@gmail.com... CONTACT THIS GREAT AND POWERFUL SPELL CASTER CALLED Dr.jartospellcaster@gmail.com ... HIS EMAIL ADDRESS IS :Dr.jartospellcaster@gmail.com.. CONTACT HIM NOW AND BE FAST ABOUT IT SO HE CAN ALSO ATTEND TO YOU BECAUSE THE EARLIER YOU CONTACT HIM NOW THE BETTER FOR YOU TO GET QUICK SOLUTION TO ALL YOUR PROBLEMS.